Ioannis Gatti Notata, seu, Tractatus qui erat fons Libri III Operis Bessarionis In Calumniatorem Platonis adversus Georgium Trapezuntium

The previously unknown source of Book 3 of Cardinal Bessarion's 'In calumniatorem Platonis'. Cardinal Bessarion's great defense of Plato, the 'In calumniatorem Platonis', written in response to George of Trebizond's 'Comparatio philosophorum Platonis et Aristotelis' and first published in 1469, was the first substantial statement of Platonism in the Plato-Aristotle Controversy of the Renaissance. Bessarion, however, had first written the 'In calumniatorem' a decade earlier, in 1459, without the massive Book III of the 1469 edition proving that medieval scholasticism supported Bessarion's interpretation of Plato and Aristotle. With the discovery of the treatise 'Notata' by the Dominican theologian Giovanni Gatti, we now know the source of Bessarion's new found erudition in medieval scholasticism. Bessarion initially attempted to incorporate Gatti's 'Notata' whole cloth into the 'In calumniatorem Platonis', but in the end he exploited it as a storehouse of the scholastic references, quotations, and arguments that made up the new Book III of the 1469 'In calumniatorem Platonis'. Thus, Giovanni Gatti's treatise played a major, though anonymous role in the Plato-Aristotle controversy for the rest of the Renaissance as Bessarion's work became in its turn a much used authority and source of information.